ide
Be Charity--to bid us think
And feel, if we would know._"

How sweetly are interspersed among them some of humbler mood, most
touching in their simple pathos--such as a Hymn for the boatmen as they
approach the Rapids--Lines on hearing the song of the harvest damsels
floating homeward on the lake of Brientz--the Italian Itinerant and the
Swiss Goat-herd--and the Three Cottage Girls, representatives of
Italian, of Helvetian, and of Scottish beauty, brought together, as if
by magic, into one picture, each breathing in her natural grace the
peculiar spirit and distinctive character of her country's charms! Such
gentle visions disappear, and we sit by the side of the Poet as he gazes
from his boat floating on the Lake of Lugano, on the Church of San
Salvador, which was almost destroyed by lightning a few years ago, while
the altar and the image of the patron saint were untouched, and devoutly
listen while he exclaims,--

"Cliffs, fountains, rivers, seasons, times,
Let all remind the soul of heaven;
Our slack devotion needs them all;
And faith, so oft of sense the thrall,
While she, by aid of Nature, climbs,
May hope to be forgiven."

We do not hesitate to pronounce "Eclipse of the Sun, 1820," one of the
finest lyrical effusions of combined thought, passion, sentiment, and
imagery, within the whole compass of poetry. If the beautiful be indeed
essentially different from the sublime, we here feel that they may be
made to coalesce so as to be in their united agencies one divine power.
We called it lyrical, chiefly because of its transitions. Though not an
ode, it is ode-like in its invocations; and it might be set and sung to
music if Handel were yet alive, and St Cecilia to come down for an hour
from heaven. How solemn the opening strain! and from the momentary
vision of Science on her speculative Tower, how gently glides
Imagination down, to take her place by the Poet's side, in his bark
afloat beneath Italian skies--suddenly bedimmed, lake, land, and all,
with a something between day and night. In a moment we are conscious of
Eclipse. Our slight surprise is lost in the sense of a strange
beauty--solemn not sad--settling on the face of nature and the abodes of
men. In a single stanza filled with beautiful names of the beautiful, we
have a vision of the Lake, with all its noblest banks, and bays, and
bowers, and mountains--when in an instant we are wafted away from a
scene that might